When Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes made his LCS debut in 2016, he made huge strides through his first year by winning that year’s Spring Split championship along with reaching the finals at the Mid-Season Invitational. Seven years later, the 26-year-old veteran has risen to the top of the league again as one of the best League of Legends players in North America.
This past playoffs, Stixxay rocked the competition by racking up a league-leading 82 kills through 17 postseason games, according to competitive League stats aggregate Oracle’s Elixir. He also had 37.6 percent of his team’s total kills, and even had more than 28 percent of his team’s total damage as the main carry for his squad’s efforts this past split.
The 2023 Spring Split was a huge comeback season for Stixxay, after the experienced AD carry spent the last few years at the bottom of the regular season standings with Golden Guardians. He and the rest of the team were always doubted, and for good reason, since he always ended up with rather lackluster talent in other roles.
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Stixxay eventually became an afterthought in the eyes of many fans and analysts, as younger ADC stars like FlyQuest’s Lee “Prince” Chae-hwan and Cloud9’s Kim “Berserker” Min-cheol lit the league up in their opening seasons.
A few weeks later, however, the Guardians’ new roster clicked when they added Stixxay’s old CLG teammate Choi “huhi” Jae-hyu, who became the go button for their mechanically gifted squad. With the sudden rise of Kim “Gori” Tae-woo and Eric “Licorice” Ritchie’s return to form, the perfect storm brewed for a dark horse to take its strides to glory.
In one of the most unlikely underdog stories, Golden Guardians stunned the competitive League scene by taking down multiple favorites like 100 Thieves, FlyQuest and Evil Geniuses in decisive fashion. Even their loss against C9 was well-fought, with Stixxay making multiple highlight-worthy plays against some of the toughest competition they’ve had to face.
Although they ended up falling just short of the LCS championship, Golden Guardians have earned their right to represent North America at MSI 2023, which should provide them with their greatest challenges yet.
